Creating my landscape design board

I thought that over the next few days I would write about what I put on to my design board, mostly to remind myself what techniques there are to create landscape-type surfaces and to help me think about how I might translate them into fabric.

For the board itself, I used tissue paper, PVA and acrylic paints to build up layers and make a stone-like surface. I spread PVA mixed with water onto the mountboard then put tissue paper (mostly white but other colours as well) on top – scrunching it into folds and then smoothing it out but retaining quite a lot of the folds. I layered more of these into hills and valleys, adding paint as I went along until I was happy with the general effect. Sometimes I added more after it was dry. On one side it was mostly greys, on the other browns. After having read Celebrate your creative self by Mary Todd Beam I think you could use gesso instead of PVA – maybe even on top of the tissue paper. I didn’t try gesso on this board but you can mix sand and other things into it to provide texture.

Later I’ll post a photo of the stones I was using as inspiration (got to collect the kids from school in ten minutes). They are mostly browns with lichen in yellow and blue.

I prepared various papers to tear or cut into shapes to put on the board: I flicked paint on to one with a toothbrush, I rolled black paint on a roller and then washed it with brown paint on another. I painted handmade paper and tore it into different sized stone-like shapes. I weaved different colours of tissue paper and stuck it down.

Post navigation

Hello. My name's Liz Plummer and I'm an artist based in Newport, South Wales, UK, I love dyeing, printing, painting and stitching.
This blog is about the influences on my work, inspiration, my daily life,
and the processes of creating. Enjoy!